The polymath

Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian biochemist Albert von Szent-Györgyi once made the pithy observation that "Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought."

I think that's really what sets apart the scientists from the rest of us -- that ability to go from "wow, that's weird!" to "... and here's how I think it works."  But there's another piece, too, that has unfortunately been lost over time through the sad fact of increasing specialization within the sciences.

And that's the ability to be conversant in a great many different disciplines, and the capacity for drawing connections between them.

Another accurate observation -- this one, I haven't been able to find an attestation for -- is that "Researchers these days are learning more and more about less and less, until finally they're going to know everything about nothing."  One of my mentors, science educator Roger Olstad, called this "focusing on one cubic millimeter of the universe," and said that generalists make better teachers, because they can draw on information from lots of disparate fields in order to make sense of their subject for students.  Fortunately for me; I'm an inveterate dabbler.  I'd have been a lousy candidate for a doctoral program, because I don't seem to be able to keep my mind locked on one thing for five minutes, much less the five years or more you have to focus in order to research and write a dissertation.

What's kind of sad, though, is that it hasn't always been this way.  Before the twentieth century, scientists were almost all polymaths; it behooves us all to remember that the word science itself comes from the Latin scientia, which simply means "knowledge."  Consider, for example, the following advances, all made in the latter half of the seventeenth century.  Do you know who was responsible for each?

• Made the first accurate measurements of motion of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, allowing the astronomer Giovanni Cassini to calculate the planet's rotational period
• Deduced the law of elasticity -- that for springs (or other elastic objects), the linear extension is directly proportional to the force exerted
• Made the first-ever drawing of a microorganism (the fungus Mucor)
• Figured out that the optimum shape for a weight-bearing dome is exactly the same as the curve of a hanging chain, only upside-down (the inverted catenary), revolutionizing architecture
• Was the first to note that venous and arterial blood differ in appearance, pressure, and composition
• Determined that the force of gravitation is an inverse-square law
• Figured out (through microscopic analysis) that petrified wood retains the cellular structure of the living wood it came from
• Studied waves in two-dimensional plates, and was the first to observe their nodal patterns (now called Chladni figures after an eighteenth-century physicist who did an extensive analysis of them)
• Built the first balance-spring pocketwatch
• Coined the term cell after seeing the microscopic holes in thin slices of cork, and likening them to the monks' quarters (celluli) in a monastery
• Concluded, from studying lunar craters, that the Moon must have its own gravity
• Was the first to analyze schlieren, the streaks caused when two transparent fluids with different indices of refraction mix (such as heat shimmer over a hot roadway, or when you stir simple syrup into water)
• Speculated that there was a specific component of air that allowed for respiration in animals -- and that both respiration and combustion gradually removed whatever that component was
• Developed the first clockwork drive for telescopes, allowing them to compensate for the Earth's rotation and track the movement of astronomical objects 

You're probably on to me by now, and figured out that these advances in diverse fields weren't made by different people.  They were all made by one man.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

His name was Robert Hooke.  He was born on the Isle of Wight in 1635 to an Anglican priest and his wife, and because of frail health wasn't given much in the way of formal education.  But his mechanical aptitude was evident from a really young age.  He was especially fascinated with clocks, and after studying the workings of a brass pendulum clock in his father's study, he went off and built himself one out of wood.

It worked.

He got the rudiments of drawing from a short-lived apprenticeship with painter Peter Lely, but once again his health interfered; according to an 1898 biography, "the smell of the Oil Colours did not agree with his Constitution, increasing his Head-ache to which he was ever too much subject."  So he went on to more generalized study, first at the Westminster School and then at the University of Oxford, from which he graduated in 1662.

Three years later, he'd accomplished so much he was appointed Curator for Life to the newly-founded Royal Society of London.

It's hard to exaggerate Hooke's contribution to Enlightenment science.  He was interested in everything.  And damn good at pretty much all of it.  The misses he had -- not beating Newton to the Universal Law of Gravitation, for example -- were more because he stopped pursuing a line of inquiry too soon, usually because he went on to some other pressing interest.

Hooke got a reputation for being prickly -- one biographer called him "cantankerous, envious, and vengeful" -- for his determination to get credit for his many discoveries.  This picture of Hooke as having a sour, grasping personality comes mainly from his conflict with two people; Christiaan Huygens (another remarkable polymath, who tangled with Hooke over who had the right to the patent for the balance-spring pocketwatch), and none other than Isaac Newton.

Newton was not a man to piss off.  Not only was he brilliant in his own right, he was apparently "cantankerous, envious, and vengeful."  He and Hooke started out at least on speaking terms, and exchanged some information with each other, but it very rapidly devolved into a vicious rivalry.  Newton, for his part, never did acknowledge that Hooke had any role in the development of the Universal Law of Gravitation.  In a 1680 letter, Newton wrote, "yet am I not beholden to [Hooke] for any light into that business but only for the diversion he gave me from my other studies to think on these things & for his dogmaticalness in writing as if he had found the motion in the Ellipses, which inclined me to try it ..."

There's an allegation -- disputed by some historians -- that when Newton was appointed president of the Royal Society at Hooke's death in 1703, Newton had all of Hooke's portraits destroyed.  The one surviving painting supposedly of Hooke is almost certainly not him, but of Flemish chemist Jan Baptiste van Helmont.  In fact, all we have left of Hooke's likeness for certain is an unflattering description of him from his friend John Aubrey: "He is but of midling stature, something crooked, pale-faced, and his face but little below, but his head is lardge, his eie full and popping, and not quick; a grey eie.  He has a delicate head of haire, browne, and of an excellent moist curle.  He is and ever was temperate and moderate in dyet."

His odd posture and appearance -- as well as his ongoing health problems -- are now thought to be due to the degenerative spine disease Scheuermann's kyphosis, which eventually led to his death at the age of 67.  But what he accomplished despite his physical handicaps is somewhere beyond remarkable.

Now, imagine if Hooke's career had begun in a typical Ph.D. program where he was told, "focus on one thing only."

Don't misunderstand me; I'm grateful for experts.  The current anti-expert bias in what passes for a government in my country is nothing short of idiotic.  It amounts to, "I'm going to discount this person who has spent her/his entire adult life studying this topic, in favor of some crank with a website."  But there's also room for the generalists -- people who aren't afraid to delve into whatever takes their fancy, and bring that breadth of experience to whatever they undertake.

People like the extraordinary polymath Robert Hooke.

****************************************

Watching the clock

I've posted before about the phenomenon of dart-thrower's bias; the tendency of humans to notice outliers, and therefore give them more weight in our attention (and memory) than the ordinary background noise with which we are constantly bombarded.  And once we notice a particular outlier, we're more likely to notice it next time -- further reinforcing the effect.

I had an experience of this a while back.  On two consecutive work days, I noticed, when I glanced at the clock after finishing breakfast, that it was 6:43.  On the face of it, this isn't that odd, since my alarm is always set for the same time, and I do more-or-less the same sequence of actions to get ready for work, in more-or-less the same order, every day.  But I did notice it.  And subsequently, every time I glance at the clock after breakfast and it is 6:43, it registers.  I'm less likely to pay any kind of serious attention if it's 6:46 or 6:39, because I've already primed my brain to be more aware of one particular time.

But if you think this exemplifies dart-thrower's bias, you ain't heard nothin' yet.  There's a guy named Jordan Pearce who posted yesterday over at SpiritScience.net who has had a similar experience, and doesn't chalk it up to a perceptual bias in the human brain...

... he thinks it's evidence we're going to have a "planetary shift of consciousness."

For him, the time was 11:11.  Despite my feeling that 11:11 is simply the most convenient way to get from 11:10 to 11:12, Pearce thinks that this time is deeply meaningful.  Here's what he has to say:

I’ll bet that if I asked publicly how many people saw 11:11 regularly, we’d probably see a huge sea of hands popping up all over the place.  Its [sic] pretty common nowadays, there’s something to it, and its about time we decoded it. 

In case you answered that you’ve never seen 11:11, I would remind you that you’re reading a blog about it right now.  Welcome to the beginning of your 11:11 synchronistic voyage.

There was a time only a few years ago when I hadn’t heard a thing about 11:11.  It was brand new to me, until it wasn’t anymore.  Interestingly enough, my 1111 synchronicities started right around the time when I began learning about a planetary shift of consciousness… The Shift.

Okey-dokey.  So if you notice 11:11, you're heading toward enlightenment, or something.

Then he throws in a lengthy quote from Uri Geller, who I really wish would go away.  You'd think Geller's popularity would have waned after his conspicuous inability to telekinetically bend spoons on The Tonight Show decades ago, but no, he's still around, and still making grandiose statements about psychic stuff and global consciousness and spiritual ascension.

So Geller doesn't really add anything to Pearce's credibility.  But Pearce goes on, undaunted, and tells us that it all... means something:

11:11 is a wakeup call of sorts, an initiation into the “aha” of realization that something big was going on.  Something that connected everyone.  In truth, the numbers are only a representation of what’s really going on.  A symbol for the connection taking place all over the world. The numbers aren’t significant, but their meaning.

Well, it would certainly be a wake-up call for me, because if I rolled over in bed and saw the time was 11:11, it would mean that I'd overslept by six hours.  But that's not what he's driving at, of course.  And what sort of meaning does he ascribe to all of this?

When you observe 11:11, you notice some interesting things.  The first thing that I see is that it is a balanced equation.

Actually, it's not an equation at all, given that an equation needs an equals sign somewhere.  But do carry on.

Not only is it two elevens, but two elevens with a : in between.  Two sides of a balanced equation, that equal out at zero.  They have a stable equilibrium were they a mathematical equation.

Yes!  Two elevens with a pair of dots!  And that equals zero!  Except when it equals four:

They also come down to 4.  I feel it like a 4 elements equation, a perfect balancing of a yin and yang energy.  If you know anything about Tarot, you might think of the 4 leaders. Prince, Princess, Queen, and King/Knight.

I thought that the Tarot cards had a King, Queen, Knight, and Page, but what do I know?  I mean, he's basically making shit up as he goes on, so may as well make this up too, right?  But it gets even better:

Now, the magic about 11:11 is not just that it’s happening to you, but it’s happening everywhere.  11:11 is a global event, it is something that people all over the world, including you right now (because you’re reading this) is experiencing.

Well, I agree that 11:11 is a global event.  In fact, it happens twice a day, no matter what time zone you're in.  That's got to be significant somehow, don't you think?

And he ends with a bang:

You are not alone.  We are all growing and learning different things, and in truth we’re really all learning the [sic] same thing.  How to love.  What is love, what does love look like, and what it means to embody Christ.

So 11:11 = 0 = 4 = synchronicity, and therefore Christ?

I mean, this is taking dart-thrower's bias and raising it to the level of performance art.

So anyhow, there you are.  I just glanced at the clock, and it's 5:36, which as times go, is all higgledy-piggledy and unbalanced, and probably points to the fact that I am feeling particularly unenlightened at the moment because I haven't had any coffee yet.  Maybe I'll feel better at 5:55, although by then I'll probably be in the shower.

Maybe I'll see what happens at 6:43.  That's bound to be interesting, right?

Of course right.